The present invention relates to a traffic density analysis apparatus for analyzing the traffic density from a video image.
To detect vehicles from a video image and analyze the traffic density, generally, a change in pixel values in a video screen must be checked. However, such processing related to pixel values requires a large calculation amount. For example, for CIF format often used in ITU-T H.261, H.263, ISO/IEC MPEG-4 or the like, processing must be performed for 352×288 pixels, i.e., a total of 101,376 pixels. For such processing with a large calculation amount, dedicated hardware must be prepared, resulting in a serious problem of cost.
As described above, the prior art requires a very large calculation amount to analyze the traffic density by detecting vehicles from a video image.